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Thursday, April 2, 2015

Budget Update - March

So if you forgot, we are working hard to reduceeliminate our debt. We started on February 1st and we are continuing once again this month.

We did amazing in February, you can read about it here, and I had even higher, more realistic goals for March. In February we paid off a 10% of our debt which was amazing, but a big chunk of that was due to us getting our tax return back.

This month was trickier in the way to find out how to pay off as much as possible without that extra income. Back in January we started the process of refinancing our house. We haven't even been in it a year yet and the rates have dropped so it couldn't hurt. We got our interest rate dropped a whole percent and are saving an additional $200 each month from this!

While we are saving these extra $450 a month now from paying off debt/refinancing, I am not seeing it yet directly. It discourages me, but I have to realize that just because I don't see an additional $450 in our bank account doesn't mean I don't see a decrease in our credit card spending. I do. I see that we are able to use our checking account for a lot more things and use our credit card way less.

I know people say to just get rid of the card so you don't use it, but it isn't that easy for us. For example, Ryan's debit card broke, in the sense that the strip no longer works and he can't use his card. This means that either he has to use our credit card for all purchases until we get a new one or I do. We, of course, limited our spending since this happened, but needing gas is a necessity that we can't go without.

So an overview of our debt elimination for the month of March: $2829! While it isn't 10%, it's better than nothing and we are slowly, but surely, making our way to a debt free life.

Money is such a stressful thing that most couples don't deal with/talk about until it is too late. I'm glad that we are both on board with this plan and I can't wait to see where we are in the next couple of months.